EGYPT: Up to five dead in head-on train crash in Egypt

An Egyptian passenger train and a freight train collided head-on on Monday (September 4, 2006), killing up to five people and injuring 28 others in the second fatal rail crash in Egypt in two weeks, security sources said. The sources said rescue workers had recovered two bodies from the wreckage including the driver of one of the trains, and were working to free three more bodies believed trapped under two overturned carriages. About 60 ambulances raced to the scene of the crash in farmland in Shibin al-Qanater, 30 km (20 miles) north of Cairo, witnesses said. The official state news agency MENA reported that two people had been confirmed dead. The crash came two weeks after two commuter trains collided in the nearby town of Qalyoub in the Nile Delta, killing 58 people. There was no immediate word on the cause of Monday's crash, but security sources said the trains had been travelling in opposite directions on the same track and collided head-on, causing several carriages to derail. The sources said many deaths were avoided because the late-night third-class passenger train was largely empty. A string of transport accidents in Egypt has sparked public anger at what critics call government failure to enforce safety standards. Egypt's transport minister fired the head of the state railway authority over the Aug. 21 crash in Qalyoub and suspended his deputy pending the results of a probe, which have yet to be publicly released. The Qalyoub crash was the deadliest railway accident in Egypt since 360 people were killed in 2002, when fire ripped through seven carriages of a crowded passenger train. More than 1,000 people died in February when a ferry sank in the Red Sea.

ITN Source | September 6, 2006

Tags:. .trains. .since. .scene. .mondays. .word